The Woman Behind The Design : Kristen Mallia

It has become a welcome sight on St Mary’s St. and in Washington Square since the introduction of Brookline’s pilot Food Truck program, but now Paris’ Creperie‘s contribution to mobile cuisine is garnering national attention too. A serious contender in Mobile Cuisine’s Best Food Truck Graphic Design Contest, holding first place with 16% of tallied votes as of this article’s writing and only entry from New England, le Tour Eiffel is the creation of local graphic artist, Kristen Mallia.

Mallia earned a BA in Electronic Media and Fine Art at George Washington University and a BFA from Corcoran College of Art & Design. While she works in several media, her greatest passion is typography and hand lettering. She enjoys the hands-on, organic feel of the process, explaining that elements of it, such as letter spacing, are often overlooked, but critical in the creative process and to the end result.

Of late, Mallia’s design talents have made quite an impact locally. In addition to the food truck design, she also created the new logo and print material for Paris Creperie. Mallia’s talents, further, have appeared in this publication. She is the creative force behind 2012’s BrooklineHub.com Youth Awards poster and the logo for 2011’s Feed Brookline Drive. Her work with our parent company, Advanced Digital Websites, includes logo creation for Brookline Local First and design for upcoming websites for Positive Tracks, Core 7, Brookline Local First and the Boothbay Harbor Operahouse.

Creating a food truck design is a sizable project that starts with a concept. Kristen credits her brother, Nick Mallia, manager at Brookline’s Paris Creperie, with the idea of using black silhouetted figures. Through brainstorming sessions, the concept developed to also include elements from the new logo in the form of European airmail stamps, creating an end-result that Mallia describes as having a ‘Marie Antoinette meets Rococo’ and French cafe feel to it. The truck design, she explains, “is like a giant postcard that gives the feel of being transported to Paris.”

Mallia’s designs prior to the food truck were certainly varied, but she explained the process here was quite different from her previous work. In addition to the scale of the project, the templates and 3D work required to create the design were something new. Adding to the pressure was a very tight deadline. The design needed to be worked up quickly and done right. Musing that tackling this design project at first “felt a little scary”, Mallia explained it was very exciting and that her design studies well prepared her to work on such a large scale.

It wasn’t until after the design was complete and the Paris Creperie food truck hit the road that Mobile Cuisine’s contest came into the picture. “It really came out of left field,” Mallia explained. Her brother Nick heard of the contest over Twitter and texted her about it. The truck was entered as a contender shortly afterwards. As a designer, Mallia feels its always a dream to have a project big enough for submission in a national competition like this, but when the project started, she had no idea this would be one of those times. She finds the positive local reaction and amount of support both validating and very exciting.

Voting remains open until June 8th, so there is still time to support this local entry. (click here to vote) In addition to the national recognition, Paris Creperie and Kristen Mallia, should they hold the lead and win the competition, will be profiled on Mobile Cuisine, and receive a month of free advertising.